A blog about the shadowy world of law enforcement informants with particular focus on the story of Michigan prison inmate "White Boy Rick" Richard Wershe, Jr. His amazing story compels us to look at many aspects of this underworld of the criminal underworld.

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Sunday, August 30, 2015

A
Wayne County, Michigan Circuit Court judge may soon consider re-sentencing Richard
Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—who has been serving a life prison sentence and who
has been turned down repeatedly for parole, even though he was never charged with
a violent crime. He deserves a second chance. Here are some reasons why.

A couple of emails this past week from a man who means
well but is clearly uninformed about all of the facts of the case of Richard J.
Wershe, Jr.—aka—White Boy Rick, has prompted me to write about a post about the
Rick Wershe of today as opposed to the Rick Wershe of the 1980s.

The emailer writes, and I’m condensing here, that Rick
needs to be contrite and admit his mistakes. He needs to be less defiant. What
the writer doesn’t know is that Rick has done that—more than once, whenever the
opportunity arises. He has submitted an affidavit to the Michigan
Parole Board admitting his guilt. He testified to the Parole Board in 2003 that
he was involved in the drug trade and he knows he did wrong by getting involved.
Rick Wershe also told the Parole Board this:

“Since the time I’ve come to prison, sir, all I’ve tried
to do is better myself. The judge said I should get a GED. I did that. I took
college (courses). I’ve never tried to escape anything. I never ran from
anything. I made every court date I ever had scheduled. I’ve never tried to escape
from prison or anything…I’ve never been in trouble the whole time I was in the
Michigan State Prison system.”

In that same 2003 Parole Board hearing Rick Wershe said: “Yes,
I knew a lot of bad people. I’m not going to deny that and I didn’t hang around
choir boys or none of that. That wasn’t the neighborhood I grew up in.”

He’s quite right about that. Dave Majkowski, one of Rick’s
lifelong friends, says the only reason he escaped the life of crime his pal Rick sank
into is because he and his family moved to the suburbs. Rick and his family did
not.

Rick took issue at the 2003 hearing and he takes issue
today with those who try to paint him as a “drug lord” and cocaine “kingpin”
The thing is, FBI agents who are deeply familiar with Wershe agree. He was
never a major dope dealer. Yet there are some in Detroit law enforcement who
persist in perpetuating that lie.

It can never be said often enough that part of Rick
Wershe’s problem is that he helped the FBI prosecute major drug dealers and
corrupt cops. He cost these criminals a lot of money and they and their friends
are doing their damnedest to keep him in prison until he dies, as payback.

But as Informant
America has noted several times, it wasn’t Rick’s choice to get in the drug
trade in the first place. Agents and police officers in a federal drug task
force in Detroit recruited him—at age 14—to get involved with drugs so he could
inform on some dope dealers he knew from the neighborhood.

As previous blog posts have explained, when the cops got
what they needed they kicked this kid to the curb. They dropped him, apparently
with no thought of helping him try to become a somewhat normal teenager again after
paying him and encouraging him to live on the wild side to help them make a
case.

Since this past March Informant
America has explored and exposed in considerable detail the lies,
exaggerations and distortions that are the basis of the legend of White Boy
Rick, alleged white teenage wunderkind of Detroit’s mostly black cocaine trade
in the 1980s.

Anyone who thinks or says Rick Wershe is defiant about
admitting his past is just plain wrong. These blog posts are defiant toward law enforcement wrongdoing in his
case, but Rick doesn’t write these posts. I do.

Rick has been extremely helpful even though he is
understandably sick of talking about his past. That stuff happened before he
was 18. He’s a grown man now. He’s considerate, frequently asking how my family
is doing. He has good manners and a good supply of common sense; something he
lacked in the White Boy Rick days.

“Reliving the past is a painful thing all these years
later!” Rick told me in an email from prison regarding my endless questions
about the details of what happened back then.

I’ve asked him to review many law enforcement
investigative files about himself. Past posts on Informant America have shown those files often contain errors,
inaccuracies and outright lies.

“I have to be honest. My blood pressure shoots up doing
that (file reviews). All the lies really piss me off and it wears me out
mentally, Vince!”

I keep asking Rick for details not to force him to relive
unpleasant memories but to demolish the myth that clouds his name. It’s not
enough to get a parole. He has that ‘White Boy Rick’ albatross around his neck
to this day. His legend is built on too many law enforcement lies and someone
needs to expose the truth as best it can be reconstructed.

Rick Wershe Jr. with some of his art. The Michigan Dept. of Corrections restricts photos of inmates. If they want to encourage inmates they should allow photos of them when they are doing positive things to turn their lives around.(Photo from Dave Majkowski on the Free Richard Wershe Jr. Facebook page.)

Today Rick Wershe concentrates on his art work; one of
his serious hobbies while he sits in prison waiting for a parole, a
gubernatorial pardon or some break after doing nearly 30 years for a
non-violent crime. He’s had some potentially life-threatening health problems,
too. Still he gets up and faces each day as it comes. He harbors hope that a
potential movie about his life will tell the truth.

Wershe got his GED high school diploma equivalent long
ago. He’s taken all the return-to-life-on-the-outside courses the prison system
has to offer.

When I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request
asking for copies of Rick Wershe’s prison discipline record, my request was
denied—because he doesn’t HAVE an inmate discipline file. Eric Smith, the
assistant to the warden at the Oaks Correctional Facility where Rick is doing
his time, told me Rick Wershe is close to being a so-called model prisoner. He
has no misconduct marks on his record.

Rick Wershe the man is not Rick Wershe the teenager. When he became an adult he changed, just
like the rest of us. All he wants is a chance to have a life. He’s always loved
cars and he hopes to get in to the car business in some way in another state
when he finally wins his freedom.

But there are people who don’t want to hear anything
about how Rick Wershe has matured and tried to better himself. When he
organized, from prison, a holiday food drive for the needy, he was criticized
by some. These are people who want the public to believe he is a menace to
society, which he is not.

One idiot on the Parole Board who thinks Rick should
remain in prison until he dies said Rick Wershe doesn’t have friends on the
outside, that his only friends are criminals. Gee! Do ya think? You put a man
in prison with convicted criminals for his entire adult life and yet you
somehow expect him to have a network of good-citizen friends on the outside?
How stupid can you be? Don’t answer that. We already know.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Richard
J. Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—at last has some real hope to get his life
sentence for dealing drugs overturned. This important confidential FBI
informant was sentenced in 1988 under a now-discarded Michigan law mandating life
in prison for possession of a large quantity of illegal drugs, even though he
wasn’t associated with any drug violence. A recent Michigan Supreme Court
decision eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing and Wershe’s new case judge is
willing to consider re-sentencing him in light of the high court ruling. The
Wayne County Prosecutor has a fresh opportunity to stand up for justice in his
case.

“Facts matter.”

Kym Worthy said that. She’s the prosecutor for Wayne County, Michigan.
She said it at a recent news conference where she announced her office had
exonerated a federal agent who had killed a fugitive during a raid. The dead
man and the federal agent were both black.

Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—aka White Boy Rick—can only hope
she meant what she said about facts and truth. If she does, she will not oppose
a court motion filed by Wershe’s appeals attorney to have his life sentence
overturned and be given a new sentence to time-served. The judge in Wershe’s
case has given the prosecutor until early October to file a written response.
If she opposes re-sentencing Wershe a full court hearing is likely. It’s
possible Rick Wershe’s lifelong nightmare might be over by the holidays. More
about that in a moment.

Prosecutor Worthy’s predecessors have steadfastly
opposed parole or gubernatorial commutation for Wershe on the very dubious
grounds that he was and remains a menace to society. Wershe is, quite frankly,
the victim of a lie-infested smear campaign by some in law enforcement. He’s
been labeled as a “kingpin” and “drug lord” and a gangster who is “worse than a
mass murderer” without any “credible facts”, without any “supportable evidence”,
without any “provable evidence” and without any “justice” or “truth.” The words
and terms in quotations in the previous sentence were borrowed from Wayne
County Prosecutor Worthy’s recent observations about the importance of such
things.

Truth? Justice? Supportable, provable evidence? Here’s
some. Richard J. Wershe Jr., who is serving life for dealing drugs, was recruited at age 14 by federal agents
to become a confidential informant against the Curry Brothers, a
politically-connected drug gang operating on Detroit’s east side during the
1980s. Rick Wershe didn’t seek out a life of crime. Law enforcement lured him
in to it to help them make a big case. Over the years he passed along to the FBI
good information about police corruption in the Detroit Police Department. When
the federal agents and Detroit police officers of the Organized Crime Drug
Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) had no further use of their teenaged informant
they cast him aside to fend for himself. So he tried to become a cocaine
wholesaler on his own. He was quickly caught by the Detroit Police. He was
17-years old. He had been living an underworld life unknown to most teenagers.
He was cocky and arrogant and full of himself. In other words, he was an
immature kid. He’s now a middle-aged man who has spent his entire adult life
behind bars for a non-violent crime he committed as a juvenile.

True mass
murderers—Detroit drug underworld hitmen—have been sent to prison and released
on parole in the time Wershe has spent locked up. Prosecutors have not opposed
the release of these killers but they have opposed the release of Rick Wershe.
Why?

Wershe’s attorney, Ralph Musilli, a lawyer never at a
loss for words, calls his client a “child warrior in the War on Drugs.” Bombast
aside, Musilli is right.

Wershe, the teenager recruited to become an informant,
passed along vital tips to the Detroit federal drug task force about dealers
and cops-on-the-take. This cost a lot of people a lot of money. Those people
have friends, political friends, in the Detroit/Wayne County criminal justice
establishment; cops, assistant prosecutors, judges and, of course, criminal
defense attorneys with deep pockets that can assist, and influence, people
running for local election.

There appears to be a loosely organized but quite
effective vendetta against Wershe for telling the FBI about drug dealing and
corruption in Detroit. How else to explain why he is the last prison inmate
still doing time under a harsh mandatory-life Michigan law that was abolished
years ago?

In late July a Michigan Supreme Court ruling struck down
portions of state law dealing with criminal sentencing guidelines. A big part
of that ruling abolished the use of mandatory minimum sentencing in the
guidelines used by court judges. When Rick Wershe was sentenced to life in
prison without parole, Detroit Recorder’s Court trial judge Thomas Jackson, now
retired, was following the established sentencing guidelines. Another Michigan Supreme
Court ruling allowed Judge Jackson to amend Wershe’s sentence to life with the
possibility of parole instead of life without parole. The judge amended Rick
Wershe’s sentence to include the possibility of parole but the mandatory minimum of life remained in effect. The
recent Michigan Supreme Court ruling appears to have changed that.

Musilli, Rick Wershe’s longtime appeals attorney,
lost no time in filing a motion for re-sentencing before Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dana
Hathaway, who now has Wershe’s case among the cases on her docket.

“This is huge,” Musilli says. “This will be the first hearing
we’ve ever had.” What he means is this will be the first court hearing Wershe has had since he was sentenced in 1988. Wershe
had a hearing before the Michigan Parole Board in 2003 but that was more like a
kangaroo court, a go-through-the-motions charade where the decision was already
made to keep Wershe in prison. This time Musilli is optimistic. “We have (the)
law on our side and we have a judge willing to listen to it.” He also has considerable facts and evidence on his side, too.

Here’s a list of credible, supportable, provable facts in
the Rick Wershe case:

Wershe
was recruited at age 14 by FBI agents to infiltrate a major drug gang

Wershe
performed his undercover role well, enabling agents to get wiretap
authorization

Wershe
was cast aside when the federal task force no longer needed him

Wershe, around 16, turned to the life law enforcement had introduced him to; he tried to become a
dope wholesaler, a “weight man”

Wershe
was arrested by the Detroit Police before he ever became an established drug
trafficker

Wershe
was never involved in drug violence

Wershe
never had a drug gang or organization

Wershe
never operated cocaine crack houses

Wershe
continued to help the FBI from prison, enabling them to prosecute corrupt
police officers who were aiding drug traffickers

Wershe helped the FBI, from prison, disrupt two murder plots

Wershe
was never charged with conspiracy, a charge used against someone who is an alleged drug “lord”

Wershe
was never charged with racketeering, a charge used against alleged drug gangsters

Wershe
was never charged with operating a continuing criminal enterprise, a federal
law commonly known as the “kingpin” statute

If Prosecutor Worthy is smart—and she is—she will
recognize that opposing a sentence reduction for White Boy Rick is a losing
hand. To use her own words: “Credible facts matter. Supportable evidence matters.
Provable evidence matters.”

She has none of those things if she goes to court and
opposes a sentence reduction for a man serving life in prison after helping law
enforcement rid Detroit of some of the infection that came with the reign of a
group of 1980s drug dealers and their corrupt friends in the police department.
All she has against Wershe is an unprovable reputation that has
become an accepted local legend.

Prosecutor Worthy can truthfully say she can’t speak for
what her predecessors did in the past, but this is now and her review of the
Wershe case doesn’t support his continued imprisonment.

She can even reprise what she said to reporters in
mid-August: “Doing justice matters and the truth matters."

Sunday, August 16, 2015

The
Michigan Parole Board should take a very hard look at the “evidence” some law
enforcement personnel presented to them at Richard Wershe, Jr.’s 2003 parole
hearing. A thorough impartial review would show the “evidence” against White
Boy Rick was shaky, at best. They can begin with a close examination of the
testimony and “evidence” of former-now-retired DEA Special Agent Richard Crock.

He knew. Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Richard
Crock knew the information in a DEA informant debriefing that he gave the
Michigan Parole Board purporting to show a connection between lifer Richard J.
Wershe, Jr. and the infamous Chambers Brothers Detroit drug gang came from an
informant who was such an outrageous and prodigious liar that the federal
government—Crock’s own team—indicted, tried, convicted and sent informant Terry
Coleman to prison for lying; lying to a federal grand jury, lying on the
witness stand at trial, lying about the Chambers Brothers drug empire.

Colbert
told William Adler, author of Land of
Opportunity, a book about the rise and fall of the Chambers Brothers drug
operation that he was smoking substantial amounts of crack cocaine when he
became a police informant. “I
was smoking so much (crack) that whatever bullshit the cops asked me, I said
yes this, no that. Whatever they wanted,” Colbert told author Adler.

Last week’s blog explained how Special Agent Crock went
before the Michigan Parole Board in 2003 and presented “exhibits” purporting to
make the case that Richard J. Wershe, Jr.—who was up for parole—should remain
in prison and continue his life sentence because he was, in fact, the “drug
lord” and “kingpin” that the gullible Detroit media had made him out to be
before his trial and conviction.

Crock’s “Exhibit # 1” was the debriefing of Terry
Colbert, the star snitch against the Chambers Brothers.

Agent Crock’s written memo to the Michigan Parole Board
stated, “The Chambers Brothers were responsible for the vast majority of
“crack” cocaine being distributed in Detroit.”

To drive home the point of how big and important the
Chambers Brothers organization was in the Detroit drug underworld, Crock’s
written statement to the Parole Board said, “…by witness accounts at the time
(the Chambers Brothers were) responsible for distribution from well over 1,000
locations.”

Yikes! Anyone associated with the Chambers Brothers must
be a bad hombre.

“As part of the Chambers case, the task force identified
a number of cocaine suppliers for the organization, to include Richard Wershe,
Jr., a.k.a. “White Boy Rick,” Crock explained. His written statement to the
Parole Board went on:

“Substantiated information indicated Wershe supplied
kilogram quantities of cocaine and firearms to the Chambers group. During 1987
Richard Wershe Jr. was regarded as one of the premier drug traffickers in the
Detroit area. (Attachment 1)”

Attachment 1? You mean the DEA debriefing of informant
Terry Colbert who went to prison for the maximum term allowed under the law for
repeatedly lying to the grand jury and the trial jury in the Chambers Brothers
trial? Attachment (Exhibit) 1? That’s your best evidence that Richard J.
Wershe, Jr was a “premier” drug trafficker???

We can rest assured that if Special Agent Crock had any
stronger evidence to show Richard Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—was a drug
kingpin, that he was a supplier to the Chambers Brothers, he would have handed
it over to the Parole Board at that hearing. But Attachment/Exhibit 1 was
apparently the best he had. He submitted other exhibit/attachments and we will
explore some of them at another time.

Let’s go back to last week’s blog post and review what
convicted liar Terry Colbert said about Rick Wershe in that debriefing about
the Chambers Brothers drug ring. Note that law enforcement reports frequently
put last names in all caps to make them easy to spot on a page.

That six page DEA investigative report of the Terry
Colbert debriefing mentions Rick Wershe exactly one time—and it had nothing to
do with drugs. On page three it states: “Also during the summer of 1986 Jerry
GANT purchased firearms for the B.J. Chambers organization from Rick WERSHE.
Most of the firearms were uzzis (sic) and 9mm pistols.”

That’s it. That is the only mention in Attachment/Exhibit
1 of Rick Wershe and the Chambers Brothers organization. Yet Special Agent
Crock presented this flimsy piece of information to the Michigan Parole Board
as proof Richard Wershe, Jr. was one of the premier cocaine traffickers in
Detroit in that era.

Another fact worth noting; at the Chambers Brothers federal drug
trafficking trial in Detroit prosecutors showed the jury an
organizational flow chart, including the sources of supply to the massive drug
ring. There were two names listed as suppliers: Perry Coleman and Kevin Duplessis.
Rick Wershe, Jr.’s name wasn’t there. His name wasn’t on the Chambers Brothers
organizational chart prosecutors showed the jury. He wasn’t even mentioned in
the trial.

Nevertheless, years later in 2003, DEA Agent Crock told
the Michigan Parole Board that Rick Wershe, Jr. was a supplier to the Chambers
Brothers in keeping with his status as one of the “premier” drug traffickers in
the Detroit area.

What’s wrong with this picture? Why would a DEA agent
present the statement of a convicted liar to the Michigan Parole Board as
evidence that Rick Wershe should stay in jail until he dies? Why didn’t he
present the Chambers Brothers organization chart federal prosecutors used at
the trial, the one that DIDN’T show Rick Wershe as a supplier to the
organization? Why didn’t he tell the Parole Board Terry Colbert, the source of
information for his Exhibit # 1, is a convicted liar?

Court documents show the so-called “No Crack Crew” of
Detroit cops and DEA agents, of which Crock was a leading member, used Colbert
as the confidential source to obtain court-sanctioned search warrants over 75%
of the time in the 101 search warrants executed in the Chambers Brothers
investigation.

Yet Colbert proved to be such a chronic and consistent
liar that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit—the federal prosecutor’s
office—indicted him for perjury—and won the case. What’s more, the judge gave
Colbert the maximum sentence under the law. And a federal appeals court upheld his
conviction and sentence.

In last week’s post I wrote, “Crock had to know Terry
Colbert had gone to prison for lying to the federal government in the Chambers
Brothers investigation. He was Crock’s informant!”

This
week the term “had to know” is being replaced by the term “did know.” DEA Agent
Crock, when he submitted “Exhibit # 1” against Rick Wershe’s parole, definitely
knew he was providing the board with information from a man who was convicted
and sentenced to prison for lying—in the Chambers Brothers drug investigation.

Upon
further investigation, it can be reported that Special Agent Crock submitted an
investigative report (known as a DEA-6 in agency parlance) specifically noting
for the record that Colbert was sent to jail for being a liar.

In
an August 1, 1991 report Crock wrote for the DEA’s Chambers Brothers
investigative file, he stated: “On July
31, 1991 Terry COLBERT was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Gadolla (Crock
misspelled of the name of U.S. District Court judge Paul Gadola, now deceased.),
Eastern District of Michigan, subsequent
to his conviction on eight counts of
perjury.(Emphasis added.)

Without
a trace of irony, Crock’s report went on: “COLBERT
was a DEA Cooperating individual, SI7—87—0030, who provided substantial
information, grand jury and trial testimony against the notorious CHAMBERS
Brothers “CRACK” Cocaine Organization. Previously, COLBERT was a trusted
lieutenant and childhood friend of the Chambers Brothers.”

Jeez,
dude! In the previous sentence of your report you just said Colbert was
sentenced to prison on eight counts of perjury. Then you turn around in the
next sentence and note this convicted liar provided “substantial information”
in the Chambers Brothers case. Hmm. Which part was true and which part was a
lie? Or do you know?

Well.
In any event there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Special Agent Crock
knew Terry Colbert had been sent to prison for lying in the Chambers Brothers
case when he submitted the DEA Colbert debriefing as “Exhibit # 1” in his
presentation to the Michigan Parole Board as to why Rick Wershe should remain
behind bars instead of being paroled.

Why?
Why did he do it? THAT is an excellent question—one someone on the Michigan
Parole Board should ask because it’s obvious Special Agent Crock’s “Exhibit #
1” against Rick Wershe, as presented to the Parole Board, was highly misleading
to put it charitably.

For
those who missed last week’s blog post {“Rick Wershe and the DEA’s Informant
Problem”), it was noted that the ONLY reference to “Rick Wershe” in the Colbert
debriefing was that a Chambers Brothers operative named Jerry Gant bought some
guns from “Rick Wershe.” The problem with that is, there were two Rick Wershes;
Junior and Senior. The late Richard “Rick” Wershe Sr. was a licensed gun dealer
and wheeler-dealer who was frequently on the edge when it came to obeying the
law. So did Gant buy guns from Rick Wershe, Jr.—White Boy Rick—or did he buy
them from the junior Wershe’s father? We don’t know and apparently the DEA
didn’t know, either. There’s no evidence Crock and his crew bothered to
investigate further.

I sent Rick Wershe an email asking about this 'gun' business. "I never sold BJ any guns," was Rick's reply. BJ - Billy Joe Chambers - was the driving force behind the Chambers Brothers drug operation.

By
presenting an official DEA investigative report to the Parole Board where a
confidential informant (Colbert) mentions “Rick Wershe” in connection with the
infamous Chambers Brothers, this seemingly connects Wershe to the Chambers
Brothers—if you’re not paying close attention. In other words, it tars Richard
J. Wershe, Jr. with the Chambers Brothers brush. Thus, to a casual reader of
“Exhibit # 1” Wershe must be
associated with the Chambers Brothers, right?
It is guilt by association, but the association is tenuous, at best, and
highly questionable as to which “Rick Wershe” the snitch is talking about.

Here are three things we know:

Rick Wershe, Jr. was recruited by the FBI as a drug informant for
a federal drug task force which included the DEA. The Detroit DEA had access
through the task force to Wershe Jr.’s work as an FBI informant.

Many in the DEA harbored deep resentment that Congress had given
the FBI authority to investigate drug cases shortly before the Detroit federal
drug task force was formed. There have been more than a few turf wars between
the two federal agencies. So if an FBI informant gets burned at a parole
hearing, it doesn’t matter much to some guys in the DEA.

Rick Wershe, Jr. helped the FBI convict some politically connected
Detroit cops in a corruption sting operation. These dirty cops had friends in
the department. Were some of their friends on the No Crack Crew of Detroit cops
and DEA agents? Only the No Crack Crew knows the answer to that one.

Terry Colbert (Kentucky Dept. of Corrections photo)

What
about Terry Colbert, the convicted liar/informant who mentioned Rick Wershe’s
name to the DEA agents? What happened to him?

Well,
he’s back in prison—again. This time he’s doing time in Kentucky on another
drug case. Colbert is in for 11 years for peddling prescription drugs.

I
reached out to him via email and asked if he would clarify which Wershe
supposedly sold guns to Jerry Gant of the Chambers drug crew.

His
emailed response:

“What’s
in it for me?”

My
email reply explained legitimate reporters don’t pay for interviews and what’s
in it for him is the chance to set the record straight on some personal
history. I noted his interview with William Adler in which he said he was smoking so much crack he was telling the police whatever "bullshit" they wanted to hear.

Colbert’s
emailed reply:

“Check
man you reached out to me with that bullshit since its bullshit im (sic)
straight F**K WHITEBOY THE CHAMBERS AND WHOEVER ELSE THIS AINT THE 90,S I WAS
YOUG (sic) AND DIDNT KNOW SHIT IM (sic) A GROW (sic) MAN NOW IVE (sic) BEEN TO
HELL AND BACK LEAVE ME THE F**K ALONE”

Sunday, August 9, 2015

A recent scathing audit
severely criticizes the DEA for its sloppy management and oversight of
confidential informants. At Rick Wershe’s 2003 parole hearing a DEA agent,
attempting to convince the Michigan Parole Board that Rick Wershe was a major
drug lord, submitted the debriefing of a DEA confidential informant who proved to be such a crack cocaine-addicted liar that the federal government had prosecuted
and convicted him for perjury 12 years earlier; a fact the agent had to know. It
was his informant.

The Justice Department’s Inspector General—the watchdog
of the department—last month released the results of an audit of the Drug
Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) handling of confidential informants in drug
prosecutions and it ain’t pretty.

Amid the newspaper headlines about the audit there was
this from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Out
of Control: The DEA Overpays Informants Without Oversight.”

And this in the Washington
Times:

“DEA's
criminal informants run wild under poor management: report”

Read on and you’ll see why the DEA’s long-running problem
with informants has a direct relationship to the imprisonment plight of Richard
Wershe, Jr.—aka—White Boy Rick.

First, let’s take a look at the findings of the Justice
Department audit of the DEA informant program. The audit tells us in the
criminal world, if you’re lucky enough to become a long-term DEA informant, you’ll
be cruising on what a 1985 Aretha Franklin hit song termed Better-Than-Ever-Street.
Examples:

*The DEA has poor management and oversight of crimes
committed by on-the-books criminal informants. Informants who help the DEA make
big cases that make the agents, the agency and prosecutors look good can count
on their handler-agents looking the other way on a wide range of crimes they
may commit, including drug dealing.

*DEA managers often devote seconds—that’s right—seconds to
reviewing the suitability of informants to continue working for the agency. The
audit covered the years 2003 to 2012. The auditors found in 2006 DEA managers
and supervisors who sit on a long-term informant committee met for all of 15
minutes and reviewed 67 informants. The average time devoted to reviewing the
suitability of each long-term informant: 13 seconds.

*Relationships between DEA agent-handlers and their
snitches are ripe for trouble. Management reviews of these agent-informant
relationships are often only cursory. The auditors tell us: “The DEA has no
rating system to assess the quality of the information provided or services
rendered by confidential sources. Instead, it relies on an agent’s knowledge
and skill to assess whether a confidential source is effective."

*The DEA even uses your tax money to pay long-term
disability benefits to certain informants. Auditors found the DEA paid out over
$1 million in informant disability payments in a single year. The family of one
informant who was killed in 1989 has received over $1.3 million in monthly
installments. In 1997 the DEA filed for disability benefits for an informant who
was shot one day after he was recruited. There’s just one little problem; the
shooting had nothing to do with DEA informant work.

*Perhaps most troubling of all, there are reports the DEA resisted
cooperating with the audit, something the agency disputes. If there was
resistance to the audit maybe it’s because a similar audit in 2005 found
similar mismanagement of informants by the DEA. It’s been going on a long time.

The DEA’s sloppy handling of informants and the
information they provide can be seen in Rick Wershe’s 2003 parole hearing.

Wershe’s appearance before the Michigan Parole Board
featured an opposed-to-parole presentation by the Wayne County prosecutor’s
office that was long on histrionics (which means exaggerated, emotional and dramatic
behavior) but short on substance when it came to evidence that Rick Wershe Jr. was
a drug kingpin, a menace to society who needs to spend his life in prison. Several
ranking Detroit cops who never had any contact with White Boy Rick were ordered
to go to the hearing and testify in opposition to the release of Wershe. They
tap danced and testified about how bad crime is. Well, yeah. Hard to argue with
that. But they didn’t have any information about Rick Wershe, the guy who was
up for parole. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

The task of making Richard J. Wershe, Jr. appear to be a
drug lord or kingpin fell to another witness, DEA Special Agent Richard Crock, now-retired, a member of the so-called No Crack Crew of cops and federal agents who kicked
in a lot of doors in Detroit around the time Rick Wershe was trying to get
started as a wholesale dope dealer.

Crock testified under oath and submitted several
documents to the Parole Board supposedly in support of the contention that Rick
Wershe was a drug lord in Detroit who was supplying some of Detroit’s notorious
gangsters with cocaine.

Crock’s very first exhibit for the Michigan Parole Board,
marked “#1”, was a DEA-6, the name for the agency bureaucratic form for investigative
reports. It featured the debriefing of a confidential informant against the
infamous Chambers Brothers drug ring by Crock and another DEA agent named Tom
McClain. The informant’s name had been blocked out with a felt-tip marker.

DEA Exhibit # 1 at Wershe's 2003 parole hearing

The Chambers Brothers had migrated to Detroit from the
dirt-poor town of Marianna, Arkansas. It was a criminal rags-to-riches story. The
DEA-6 submitted to the Parole Board by Agent Crock at Rick Wershe’s 2003
hearing says the informant against the Chambers Brothers had moved to Detroit from the Marianna, Arkansas area in 1983 and began to sell marijuana for Billy Joe Chambers out of a convenience
store called “BJ’s Party Store.”

Even though the informant’s name was blacked out on the
DEA-6 that was given to the Parole Board, his identity can be deduced from
other evidence. In a book called Land of
Opportunity about the rise and fall of the Chambers Brothers Drug Empire,
author William Adler wrote: “Nobody
provided the police with more information than Terry Colbert, the young man who
had worked for Billy years earlier at BJ’s Party Store.” The DEA-6 noted
the confidential informant had moved to Detroit from Arkansas in 1983. Adler’s book said
Terry Colbert had migrated from Arkansas to Detroit in 1983. The DEA-6 and Adler's book say the informant, identified by Adler as Terry Colbert, worked for Billy Joe Chambers at a Detroit convenience store.

In this six-page DEA debriefing Colbert describes the scope
of the Chambers Brothers drug operation which was truly impressive—the biggest
Detroit had ever seen. But he only mentions Rick Wershe one time and it had
nothing to do with drugs. Colbert said an operative of the Chambers Brothers
organization bought some guns from Rick Wershe, presumably meaning Rick Wershe,
Jr. But maybe not. His father was Richard or “Rick” Wershe, Sr.

DEA informant report says Wershe sold guns, not drugs. But which Wershe? Jr. or Sr.?

This is a good place to note Richard J, Wershe, Jr.’s late
father, Richard J. Wershe, Sr., was a gun dealer. He also was known to some as
Rick Wershe. Whether Rick Wershe, Jr. or Sr. sold the guns to the Chambers
Brothers is never spelled out in the DEA-6 report. The name “Rick Wershe” is
just there, with no clarification, no description of whether it was Jr. or Sr.
or evidence of any further investigation of what Colbert said. The DEA-6 was
typed up three days after the informant debriefing; plenty of time for the DEA
to make inquiries with the FBI or BATF—the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco
and Firearms.

That’s it; one mention of Rick Wershe selling guns, not
dope, to the Chambers Brothers and no due diligence explanation of whether “Rick
Wershe” was Richard J. Wershe Junior or Senior.

This DEA-6 was offered to the Michigan Parole Board as
Exhibit # 1, as part of the “proof” Richard Wershe, Jr. was a drug dealing menace
to society who should remain locked up.

It gets better—or worse depending on how you look at it.

Terry Colbert was one of the key secret witnesses
testifying before a federal grand jury investigating the Chambers Brothers drug
ring. When they went to trial Terry
Colbert was one of the star witnesses for the prosecution. It was a lie-filled
disaster.

The problem was Terry Colbert used crack—big time. In Land of Opportunity William Adler
devotes considerable space to profiling Terry Colbert, the confidential informant
quoted in Exhibit # 1 against Rick Wershe.

“He changed from an easygoing if unreliable young man to—as
many who knew him put it—a ‘fiend,’” Adler wrote. Colbert had become addicted—badly—to
smoking crack cocaine. Adler quotes Billy Joe Chambers as saying (Colbert) “started
smoking his lights out.” Billy Joe Chambers couldn’t trust Colbert to be around
crack cocaine to sell it so Colbert’s source of income to buy crack dried up. He
decided to get even with his old pal, Billy Joe Chambers. “F**k it, I’ll fix
him,” Colbert told Adler. Terry Colbert decided to become a police informant
against the Chambers Brothers.

Adler writes that Terry Colbert walked in to the Detroit Police 5th Precinct one day and volunteered to become an informant. He met with a narc named Mick Biernacki, a member of the No Crack Crew. As noted previously, this was a team of DEA and Detroit Police officers working to build a case against the Chambers Brothers. Biernacki, the Detroit Police narc, worked closely with Richard Crock, the DEA agent. The No Crack Crew shared Colbert as an informant.

Even though Colbert was too addled by crack to sell it, even though dope dealers didn't trust him, this didn’t bother the DEA and Detroit Police who used him as a major
informant.

“I
was smoking so much (crack) that whatever bullshit the cops asked me, I said
yes this, no that. Whatever they wanted,” Colbert told author
Adler.

Court records show that in exchange for his confidential
informant work the DEA negotiated immunity from prosecution for Colbert and
paid him over $16,000 for “expenses” over a two year period. Court documents
also show the DEA and Detroit Police team known as the “No Crack Crew” relied
on Colbert the crack addict as the confidential source who provided “probable
cause” for at least 75% of the 101 search warrants (raids) executed in the
Chambers Brothers drug conspiracy investigation.

When it came time to testify, Terry Colbert proved to be
such an unreliable liar that he was later indicted by a federal grand jury and
convicted in 1991 on eight counts of perjury. He was given a sentence of 135
months (over 11 years), the maximum under federal law. Fortunately for the government, other witnesses and evidence led to convictions in the Chambers Brothers case.

Yet, in 2003 DEA Special Agent Richard Crock chose to
make the 1987 debriefing of this convicted liar Exhibit # 1 for the Michigan Parole
Board in their consideration of whether to release Richard J. Wershe,
Jr.

Crock had to know Terry Colbert had gone to prison for
lying under oath before a federal grand jury and on the witness stand in the Chambers Brothers court trial. Crock had shared Colbert as an informant for the No Crack Crew so he was
Crock’s informant! Yet, Agent Crock submitted to the Parole Board the Terry
Colbert debriefing where he mentions Rick Wershe one time for selling guns, not
drugs to the Chambers Brothers organization.

No one has challenged the use of information from a convicted
liar to make a decision about parole for Rick Wershe and no one has questioned DEA Agent Richard Crock’s clearly
misleading presentation under oath.

White Boy Rick is still in prison to this day and
according to the Justice Department Inspector General the DEA still has serious
problems managing confidential informants and the agents who handle them.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Informant
America is determined to get at the truth of the story of Richard Wershe, Jr.
who has been burdened with the street name White Boy Rick since he was a
teenager. This week’s post includes an important correction to last week’s
installment and a discussion of why it’s premature for Wershe’s supporters to
get excited about a recent Michigan Supreme Court ruling on sentencing
guidelines.

This week’s blog post is a twofer; two topics. First, a
correction to last week’s post. The previous post talked about Sam Curry, the
cocaine importing partner of the late Art Derrick who was the wholesale
supplier to the biggest names in the Detroit cocaine trade of the 80s. The blog
mentioned he was the father of the notorious Curry Brothers, the ones Richard
Wershe Jr. informed on for the FBI.

It turns out there were TWO Sam Currys; both older black
men, both in the drug trade, both operating on Detroit East Side during the
same years and both named Sam Curry. The odds of that must be astronomical. The
existence of the two Sams was pointed out by crime blogger Scott Burnstein and
confirmed in an email from Rick himself. The Sam Curry who was Art Derrick’s
partner as a wholesaler/importer of cocaine was not the Sam Curry who is the father of the Curry Brothers. In defense of this blog it should be noted some law enforcement guys
from that era didn’t realize there were two Sam Currys, either.

It’s important to get this stuff right and correct any
reporting errors. The reason to be scrupulous with the facts is this blog is focused on debunking the legend of White Boy Rick which is based on lies, falsehoods
and wild exaggerations.

A big reason Rick Wershe is still in prison when contract
murderers have been set free is because of his legendary status as a “drug
lord” and “kingpin.” It’s not true. It never was. But the Michigan Parole Board
and various state and local criminal justice agencies believe it because it’s
never been seriously challenged, which is what Informant
America is doing in installments each week.

This Big Lie, initiated by some glory-hungry people in
law enforcement and sensationalized by the Detroit media in the late 80s, has
to be exposed. People with the power to do something about Rick Wershe’s
continued imprisonment must be shown Rick Wershe has been kept in prison based
on false information. There are plenty of lies that have been
published about him. In order to dismantle the White Boy Rick legend this
series of reports must adhere to facts and the truth.

The role of informants in our criminal justice system is
one of the most underreported yet critical elements in prosecutions. This blog
will eventually report on other interesting informant cases from around the
country but for now it is focused on exposing the false information about
Richard Wershe, Jr.—aka—White Boy Rick.

***

Some of Rick Wershe’s supporters got excited last week
over reports the Michigan Supreme Court had struck down portions of Michigan’s
sentencing guidelines as unconstitutional. One media story speculated on
whether it could pave the way for Richard Wershe, Jr.’s release. Practically
speaking, it’s hard to see how.

In 1992 the Michigan Supreme Court struck down the drug
law under which Rick Wershe was convicted. It was called the '650 law.' Anyone
convicted of possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine or other illegal drugs automatically
received a life sentence. It didn’t matter if the drug dealer was never
involved in any violence. If they caught you with 650 grams or more, you were
in for life. In laymen’s terms, the Michigan Supreme Court said in its 1992
ruling that this is contrary to the concept of letting the punishment fit the
crime.

Former Michigan Governor William Milliken was quoted as
saying it was the worst piece of legislation he ever signed in his career. It
was enacted in the era when drugs erupted as a major crime problem coast to
coast. The frightened public demanded that the politicians DO SOMETHING. In
Michigan, the 650 lifer law was one of the official responses. It was part of
the laughable “war on drugs.”

So Rick Wershe, who never committed or ordered any acts
of drug violence, who never operated crack houses, who never had a drug dealing
organization or “crew”, who was never named in any conspiracy case, never
charged with operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise, otherwise known was
the federal “kingpin” statute, was sent to prison for life.

All of the other
Michigan drug dealers convicted under the 650 law have been paroled. Not Rick
Wershe. He’s haunted by the White Boy Rick legend. If there is a legal argument
to be made for freeing Rick Wershe, Jr. it ought to be the 1992 Michigan Supreme Court ruling. Yet,
the powers-that-be have refused to budge on a parole for the inmate known as
White Boy Rick.

Does this look like a "kingpin" who had ruthless, murderous inner city drug dealers following his orders?(Detroit News photo)

Some like to think Rick Wershe will be set free if Gov.
Rick Snyder or some federal or local judge agrees with the legal implications
of some higher court ruling such as the one last week. Uh huh. Sure.

A few weeks ago Michigan's Gov. Snyder refused to reduce the sentence
of a man named Saulo Montalvo who has done 20 years for being the getaway
driver in a store robbery where the clerk was killed. Like Rick Wershe,
Montalvo was a teen when the crime was committed. He was 16. Rick was arrested
under the 650 law when he was 17 and sent to prison at age 18.

Montalvo's bid
for release by the Governor included a letter signed by a dozen of the
murdered store clerk's relatives who said Montalvo deserved another chance. In
Wershe’s case, even former FBI agents who know him have sent letters and
testified to the Parole Board that he ought to be released. Their judgment has
been ignored.

Here is the reason the Montalvo story is worth
noting: Gov. Snyder relied on the judgment and recommendations of the
Michigan Parole Board in making his decision. The Associated Press reported, "...Snyder rejected the request for a
shorter sentence after the Michigan parole board, which screens all cases, said a commutation had "no
merit."

Please think real hard about the previous sentence. Any
appeal to the governor in behalf of Rick Wershe is going to go right back to the Parole Board which has
steadfastly refused any breaks for the prisoner known as White Boy Rick. At
present there is no political or administrative mechanism for challenging the judgment of the Parole Board. There is no way to compel an investigation of the so-called facts the Parole Board is relying upon to decide Rick Wershe's fate. Ideally there should be a thorough independent investigation of the facts, the real facts, in the Rick Wershe case.Such an investigation should explore the accusation made here that the Parole Board received false information about inmate Wershe.

This blog will prove, in great detail, the Michigan Parole Board has been
deceived by some members of law enforcement who have opposed parole for Richard
Wershe, Jr. as part of what appears to be a vendetta. This blog will prove law enforcement documents about Wershe that
were given to the Parole Board contain false information and provable
absurdities.

That kind of exposure of the truth MUST be done if there is
any hope of changing minds on the Parole Board. It’s a tough task but not
impossible. It requires exposing two things: 1) the lies in the law enforcement
documents purporting to show Wershe was a drug lord and 2) the irresponsible media
frenzy that created the legend of White Boy Rick. Anyone who thinks the Parole Board has not been influenced by the media coverage of an inmate known as a "street icon" and "legend" is mistaken. Period.

There’s a reason top-notch criminal defense attorneys
worry and argue in court about pre-trial publicity. They KNOW the court of
public opinion often matters as much as the courtrooms in the courthouses, even if judges pretend otherwise.

Wershe is a man imprisoned by his reputation, which is
false. The governor, the courts and the parole board are reluctant to let
someone known as White Boy Rick go free. They tremble in fear there will be a
public uproar; that they will be accused of being soft on crime. Better, in their minds, to play it safe, to keep a man in prison rather than face criticism from uninformed voters and taxpayers and their political opponents.

They need what
is known as political cover. They need proof Rick Wershe is not a menace to
society and never was. If they can be shown conclusively that Richard Wershe,
Jr.’s reputation as a “drug lord” and “kingpin” is without any substance, that
it is a lie-turned-legend, they just might have the courage to finally bring
justice to a great injustice. That’s why Informant
America will continue to hammer away at exposing the truth about White Boy
Rick. More next week.

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About Me

My name is Vince Wade. I am an independent/freelance investigative reporter, writer, narrator, multimedia producer and director.
I live near the beach in a city outside Los Angeles.
I started in radio news but I spent most of my career at network-affiliated TV stations in Detroit, Michigan where I covered crime, the courts, public corruption and various scandals. I’ve won over 20 awards including three Emmys, 1st Place for TV News documentary at the New York International Film Festival, plus wire service reporting awards and others.
I work on topics and projects that interest me and stories that need to be told.